Modular Multilevel Converters (MMC) are increasingly becoming popular in Medium Voltage Drives applications. Voltage ripple on sub module (SM) capacitors is an ssue that can be overcomed with modified topologies such as flying capacitor passive cross connected arms MMC (FC PCC MMC), exploiting high frequency voltage and current injection for active SM capacitor voltage balancing. The arm inductors perform a key role for the overall converter operation and safety, hence the proper design is crucial to lower the overall converter size, weight and cost. The Sub arm inductor coupling configurations are analyzed and a novel solution is proposed and designed in this paper. The effectiveness of the solution is demonstrated by an accurate simulation model of the overall converter, feeding a permanent magnet synchronous machine and including the distributed control timing and the scheduling of the measurement and controller execution.
